Discount Accommodation and Affiliate Payments

Online travel agents make commissions of approximately 15% to 25% of the price of the accommodation booked. Some share that commission with travellers through loyalty programs. Others give discounts upfront, or share some of the commission with "affiliates" who refer other customers. One such service is JetSetter, who has discount quality accommodation, and shares 5% with the guest and 5% with the referring affiliate. See Jetsetter. (I use this service by the way, and it is good. I have stayed in luxury accommodation at great prices.)

Another good referral program is OFX (OzForex) which is an international wire money transfer business. It is in competition with Western Union, and is much better value. See OFX website.

Issue: Whether, under the court’s First Amendment precedents, a law that makes it a felony for any person on the state's registry of former sex offenders to “access” a wide array of websites – including Facebook, YouTube, and nytimes.com – that enable communication, expression, and the exchange of information among their users, if the site is “know[n]” to allow minors to have accounts, is permissible, both on its face and as applied to petitioner, who was convicted based on a Facebook post in which he celebrated dismissal of a traffic ticket, declaring “God is Good!”

In oral argument on 27 February 2017, Justice Kennedy drew an analogy between social media and the public square. Justice Ginsburg said restricting access to social media would mean being cut off from a very larg…

In an appeal decision handed down on Friday, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia has affirmed a trial judge's decision that metatags and Google advertisements were trademark infringements.

The case concerned a real estate agent advertising short term accommodation, using the name of a nearby Accor hotel (which was a registered trademark) to attract Internet users to the real estate agent's booking website.

The court confirmed findings of the trial judge that the following were trademark uses and trademark infringements: use of of the trademark in the domain name, use in metatags for the website, use in headings for the website, use in email addresses, and use in Google advertisements.

The Australian National Transport Commission has released a discussion paper
Regulatory options to assure automated vehicle safety in Australia. The paper identifies 4 regulatory options for a safety assurance system for automated vehicle technology.
Submissions for this discussion paper are open until 4pm, Friday, 28 July 2017.
The NTC expects to present it preferred regulatory option to the Minister in November 2017.
Full
media release.